Electron heat conduction under non-Maxwellian distribution in hohlraum simulation

Abstract

An electron transport model based on the non-Maxwellian distribution f0∝e-νm (NM model), caused by the inverse bremsstrahlung heating, is used in 1-D plane target and 2-D hohlraum simulations. In the NM model, the electron heat flux depends not only on the gradient of electron temperature Te but also on the gradients of electron number density and the index m. From 1-D simulations, the spatial distribution of Te is dune-like and Te decreases obviously in the flux-heated region, which is very different from the flat profile obtained by using the flux limit model (FL model) but similar to the experimental observations [Gregori et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 205006 (2004)] and the nonlocal results [Rosen et al., High Energy Density Phys. 7, 180 (2011)]. The reason which causes the dune-like profile of Te is discussed in the paper. From 2-D hohlraum simulations, the NM results of the plasma status, the emission peak and profile inside hohlraum are very different from the FL model results. Finally, it is hard to use an average flux limiter in the FL model to obtain the same hohlraum plasma status and emission with those under the NM model.